I think the only thing I would do differently is allow for the camera lens to be mounted on the axis of rotation, so the rig is going around the center of the lens. You already have forward/back adjustment to you can put the lens so it rotates around the average nodal point in vertical and horizontal rotation. Finding the nodal point in panoramic photography? All of which reminds me to get back to my camera slider project 'sometime' (-:
Good point. The original idea was to have not only the lens in the center of roll axis but also tilt & pan, the focal plane of the sensor itself. I usually don't worry too much about getting the focal plan on axis. I use the foward/back slide for balance concerns mostly. Couldn't make it happen with all of my cameras so this is a nice compromise. There's absolutely no way this design can accommodate this camera inside a 12in lazy susan bearing and keep the lens in the middle. You need a bigger outer ring to get the lens in the center. A bigger roll bearing means it's impossible for me to print the roll gear. This is the absolute biggest gear I can print on the printers I have. This Sony FX6 actually comes the closest to getting the lens in the center. My other cameras are taller so the off-axis is even worse.
From your last post I guess that all the plastic parts are 3d printed. They look awesome! I also noted the every axis has a different gear type. Are you experimenting to see which one is the best?
Check back tomorrow Justin, the whole rig will look different. There's nothing on this rig that's lasted more than a few weeks. For about the last 8 months, all the steppers were 5:1 gear reduced NEMA 17. the NEMA 23 are pretty new. Currently on the bench are a bunch of "closed loop" NEMA 23. The next time the rig gets disassembled, I'll be swapping the closed loop steppers. Also you may notice that ALL axis are designed for dual stepper driver but currently only the TILT axis has dual steppers. The next teardown will get DUAL steppers on every move axis. Then I'll show some very fast and stable moves with twice the braking power. First though, I'm swapping back in the ball screw drive shaft. I had the ball screw in for a few months but it was too slow with the NEMA 17. I think these nema 23 could turn it plenty fast. As I've learned over many iterations, turning fast is not always the hard part. STOPPING is the hard part when you have so much mass spinning or turning. You can see that in the shaky parts of the YouTube video.
Really well done Aaron! I think I am more in love with the look of this Build then it's function Look forward to seeing how well the dual steppers work out for the braking and overall speed. Keep up the great work, its and amazing project